by M. Street
“Go have fun, but do not go in the water.” Charlie took off, following his curiosity. “And say within my sight.”
I turned to Dev. “Ozwald offered to take Charlie to another Avian stronghold,” I mentioned, mindful of Dev’s unsavory discriminatory stance on all things Avian.
“Unacceptable,” Dev replied protectively. “The nest in the Tetons was easily compromised.”
“How about the Canites?” I asked about the obvious and only other option. “Raven didn’t offer, but I completely trust her and the pack with my life.”
Dev considered, giving strenuous thought to the situation. He had come to trust Jeremiah and the Canites when we were held up in the Black Forest.
“What about someone with stealth mastery inherent in their blood? A cunning individual who knows how to disappear in a mature world for as long as they like. Someone like me,” Dev said with a partial grin, narrowing his eyes into a crafty expression. “Someone no one would ever expect.”
“I see the advantages. Do I know this Vampacoti?” I asked, skeptically peering down his angle.
“His name is Sam Walsh,” Dev said like he had just solved a quantum equation. “We go back centuries. He held high rank in my pride. Not only can he cast fast, he is an extremely skilled stalker. His allegiance remained with me when Junjari executed her coup. Last I heard he was in Rome. He remains an outcast with no allegiance to the Arbitri.” The conviction in Dev made it hard for me to argue, but my intuition still swung toward Raven.
“Sounds like a good idea,” I said, not knowing enough to poke holes in his proposal. “Let’s bring Raven and Jeremiah in on it. The Canite pack is strong.”
“That could be a disadvantage. The Arbitri could find him easier with so many involved. Eli has been raiding Canite and Avian camps. Sam can keep Charlie inconspicuous,” Dev said, opposing my view. With my recent debacles, my confidence sloshed.
“I told Raven I would check in after I safely leapt Charlie,” I remembered. I went to detach my necklace to call Jeremiah and Raven in the copper Canite valence.
“Please be careful. A wrong call could bring Eli,” Dev said.
“I know.” I undid the clasp, releasing my aura and perfecting my senses without creating a ripple. I closed my eyes, calling out to Raven and Jeremiah on the Canite frequency. Time crept slowly, stretching the wait.
“No reply,” I said mystified, opening my eyes. Just as my confusion was mutating into concern, I felt a surprising response.
“Hold on,” I said, parsing through the unusual live feed. “It’s Zeta. It’s hard to tell through the concentrated pine forest. She is in northern Canada. That is where Jeremiah secretly told the Canites to regroup after the Congo operation. She is really upset.” The fierce Canite guard was uncharacteristically shaken. “She is asking us to meet her. She needs our help.” I fought back her frantic feelings from becoming my own.
“Far too risky,” Dev put down.
“The Canites would do anything for me. I will not turn my back on them.”
“It’s not going to be long before Eli feels your pregnancy, masked or not,” Dev said, his voice escalating. “His power will start to drain as the babies develop. When he feels them, the game will intensify dramatically. Nothing will become too egregious for him. His biggest and only true fear is manifesting: he is coming to an end.”
The conviction in Dev’s tenor gave me the chills. “We must not fool ourselves. Our situation is going to get much worse. You need to prepare yourself mentally if we,” Dev wrapped his arms around me, glancing toward Charlie, “and our children are going to survive.”
I understood every weighted word Dev spoke. What he said was true to the core, but I couldn’t accept the ramifications of the life we created. “We have to go.” I closed my eyes, signaling back to Zeta that we were on our way. Dev sighed loudly.
“We cannot travel until nightfall since leaping is not an option,” Dev reluctantly advised. By the sweetness in his heart, I knew he was complying out of love rather than because of my royalty. By the intensity of the reddening evening sun showers, we had several hours before we’d be able to make our move.
Dev pulled out his crystal, making some adjustments to the metallic base. “Nothing from Valbeth,” he grunted. “This is the longest time we’ve gone without contact.”
“Can you feel her?” I asked. If she was birthed, her ambivalent presence would flow everywhere with the grace and continuity of gravity.
“No. She is alive,” Dev answered, wondering, whittling, and worrying over his Vampacoti confidant.
“The frogs are different here.” Charlie ran back, engrossed in the new nature.
“I’m going to post until we leave.” Dev brushed my face like fresh pink on a bare canvas. “Thank you for making me so happy,” he said sweetly, talking about the new lives I harbored amidst the chaos. I spiked in apprehension, still reeling in the revelation. Dev’s steady and unswaying love triggered hope despite the uncertainty rustling in my gut.
“Come look,” Charlie insisted.
“Ok,” I replied, welcoming the diversion. I hung the emeralds and pearls around my neck, masking for multiple motives. Dev unmasked, formulating into his big cat self, growling low and slow, freezing Charlie in his path. He brushed his wet nose against me and Charlie, scenting us before blurring away into the redwood groves.
“Let’s go.” I stepped toward the trickling waters, breaking Charlie out of his Vampacoti-induced trance. He broke into a chain reaction of questions about Dev, the mature realm, and my place in it. The fantasy life I describe sounded outlandishly wonderful, filled with extraordinary beauty and super-beings. In reality, the beauty was a thin veneer to a world teaming with ungodly conflicts.
I savored the time with my little brother, especially after being separated for what felt like an eternity. Knowing I’d be leaving him again turned my mood bittersweet. He screamed and laughed as I flew him through the air, showing and telling my answers to the world of light. Charlie beamed with excitement, imagining the beautiful auras I described. Being open with who I really was with Charlie was wondrous and freeing. His unbounded wonder helped subside the growing mass of worries eating me from the inside out. Besides Safe, Raven and Jeremiah were disturbingly missing. More was unraveling than coming together, and what was next was vastly larger than I was.
31
A Mother’s Sacrifice
C
harlie finally settled down after being flown around what seemed like a million times, giving me precious time to think. Crystal clear memories of him jumping into my arms over and over again when he was a year old came rushing back. Charlie’s genuine joy of being with me trimmed some of the tape I tangled taking him from Oak Creek. I stayed close to him, generating soft light from my body so he wouldn’t fear the darkness of the dense forest and moonless night. I giggled, replaying his fright over a pair of black bears that had come to say hello. My heart was able to connect my intentions to nature, making all kinds of wildlife friendly no matter their deadliness.
Dev was constantly circling our position, watching for any Arbitri. The protective fervor in his purposeful heart left me breathless but did little to hold back the anxiousness that enveloped my outlook. He pulsed his love for me on our private bond, making him feel closer than his mile distance. I added to his affection before giving it back.
The more I resisted thinking about being pregnant, the more it showed up in every thought. Feeling the embryos trickle down my fallopian tubes didn’t help. The numbness of finding out was starting to wear off, leaving me to ponder and play out the possibilities. Every mature woman had the control over her body to will away a pregnancy. It was an option I had to consider.
We didn’t have much time before Eli would start to feel the babies draw on his light and there was no telling what he would do. Safe’s life would get used to force my hand. Knowing I would have to choose between lives that I loved caused me to tremble.
Mom and Dad, two ve
ry powerful and experienced Guardians, had tried to hide from Eli. They had lasted less than a week before my biological brother killed our father and imprisoned Esther and me. He threw the world off-kilter, ensuring his singularity. How would Dev, a Vampacoti, and me, a pregnant newbie still discovering my world, keep ahead of a thousand-year-old juggernaut with an unstoppable army? With the end of Eli’s life growing in my belly, it was a given he would sink below desperation to terminate it.
As with most serious matters of the heart, I knew my mind would be of little help. Mom said it took losing your head to gain answers to impossibilities.
I enchanted a cute rabbit to keep Charlie occupied. Taking a deep breath and lifting into the air, I cut the chain on my fearful, clanging thoughts to hear my intuition speak.
Focusing on breathing the pine air, I closed my eyes. The nocturnal sounds of the cooing night birds and the nearby chiming brook induced a trance. My inner eyes opened into the white universe that foretold the pregnancies. I loved the expansive space and going weightless and formless. I grabbed double takes before my headless helm took me elsewhere.
The twin spheres orbiting Dev and me were more defined. The emerald green and orchid violet storms of indiscriminate metallic light were more beautiful than I could have imagined. A masculine essence beamed grace from the core of the green star and a feminine essence beamed fierceness from the center of the violet star.
I was pregnant with a boy and a girl.
The revelation jolted the scene around me into streams of colors. I released myself into the flow, dropping to the shallows of a pebbled beach. The lemony yellow resonances from the aqua-blue glacier returned me to the Alaskan vision. Now the little girl running toward the erupting waters was a full-grown warrior. The wild woman rivaled Raven, with lengthy muscles, scarred skin, and weathered, wise light. She moved fast with long hair flagging behind her increasing speed. Her nickel core glittered with a royalty that went beyond her blood.
Just as she reached the mass of welling sea water moving toward her, a submarine-sized orca broke through the raised surface, slamming into the screeching woman. I braced for the impact, but there was none. The woman’s metallic nickel ghost raced into the salty depths while the spirit of the orca flew offshore into the surrounding pine forest. Like before, the seven metallic suns blended into one, waking me from my reverie. I felt transposed, like I was being given answers to questions I never asked.
Like rising incense, the name sprang from my hypnotic collective connection offering glimmers of hope. Ahnah! The Cetacite queen and her ability to calculate the future sounded more like a reliable fortune teller to me. Something inside me germinated, spawning a yearning to find her. With her we could do more than hide—we could fight back. I broke the surface of my trance, breathing back into reality.
Dev swiveled directions, pulling his adrenaline alarm. He accelerated sharply toward Charlie and me. Letting him know he was going to have a son and a daughter was going to have to wait.
“Time to go,” I told Charlie as I picked him up, encasing us in a brick-thick bubble, muffling his surprised scream. My redwood home was no more.
“What … what’s going on?” he garbled, not firing on all cylinders.
“Please, keep very quiet,” I said softly. Charlie’s aura fluttered bright from the quick realness.
From Dev’s flight response and my dampened senses, I knew Vampacoti silver and Equuian bronze were involved in his hurried worry.
Slinking through the ancient redwoods, a black-and-white blur slid, formulating into a beastly Dev.
“A pride of thirteen Vampacoti and five Equuians. They are unmasked, doing sweeps. We must leave now. They haven’t sensed us yet, but they soon will.” Dev ramped with animal protectiveness, bordering on possession. “Stay masked at all times. Please.”
Dev touched me. “No one can know about our pregnancy,” he said to Charlie and me. Dev paused against the encroaching danger, using stares of silence to let his request sink in. “You’re going to have to fly us fast … very fast.”
“Ok.” I pulled Dev into our escape pod of light. Heading into flight, I transitioned into battle mode. “To Canada and Zeta,” I said bringing Dev to my right and Charlie to my left, forming an aerodynamic needle-nosed cone of light. I accelerated, putting space and time between us and the burning fuse. Before we wove through the second grove of redwoods, Charlie moaned, green with motion sickness. I slowed down, flying higher so we didn’t have to snake as much.
“What are you doing?” Dev asked uncomfortably loud. “Get back in the canopy and go a lot faster than this. Guardians will be scatter-leaping the area any second now.”
Feeling his engine choke into fright fired my urgency. Dev raised his hand as soft clouds circled his wrist, casting a lullaby spell. Charlie drifted into a medically induced sleep. “Hit it.” He pulled himself in closer, mixing our nervous body heat.
I broke gait, fast-tracking us close to the speed of sound. Dev scanned behind us, nervously watching for any trailing Arbitri. My love for him and our pregnancy pushed all that I had into the run. Whisking out of the trees, I banked us into the high tide aura of the ocean. My mask made it feel like I was wearing a pair of snow boots for a sprint race, but I muscled through the effects. The pregnancy fueled me with a new force without reins. My drive was infinitely strong, lovingly fierce, and selfless by definition. I felt Guardians pop into existence behind me, like random fireworks. The deadly vibrations kicked me into Mach speeds.
We boosted into a clean getaway, staying under the electrified crest of the orange waves thick from the pull of Jupiter. In mind, body, and spirit, I leaned forward into the flight like an Avian, sealing our escape. I spread my arms like wings and hunched my legs in close, pointing into the supersonic speeds.
Startlingly, my bones, skin, and face instinctually started to change, like morphing clothes. The cellular shifting of my insides left me formless for a fraction, making me feel like a spirit in the wind. My eyes enlarged taking up more of my face, tactically twitching through the orange sea and purple sky blending by. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Dev was distracted, keeping up with the shoreline blowing by at Mach five. Charlie had a crown of dream stars, swirling softly, oblivious to my changing form and the sound-shattering speeds.
My bones thinned, displacing the density into my thickening skin. My teeth blended together, protruding out of my mouth like a beak. Even the twin embryos drifting into my uterus became encased in a calcium-like shell. I was formulating into an Avian!
Before I hit the tipping point in form and speed, our destination approached. I slowed, snapping back into human before Dev could visually confirm what I felt.
“I don’t know what just happened. I almost formulated into a really big bird,” I exclaimed, coasting down the mountainside covered in a city of pines.
“I know, I felt it,” Dev said, startled, overcome by feeling the insides of my almost-Avian form.
I set us down under a heavy conifer concentration blanketing the sky with velvety layers of opaque light. I crafted a bed for Charlie out of soft earth and warmed moss. He remained under Dev’s sleep spell.
“You hold the frequencies in your light to formulate,” Dev reasoned. “We are still discovering you.” We looked at each other, silenced in the magnitude of the discovery.
For the first time, I fired off thoughts about my babies before myself. Will our children be able to formulate? Will they be able to cast physical and metaphysical spells? Will they be Guardian? Vampacoti? Hybrid?
“If I hold all metallic frequencies, could I have a child of any metallic color?” I asked, coming off my Avian high.
“Good questions,” Dev admitted, vacated by the possibilities. “Do you think you could formulate into a Vampacoti?”
“When I was in Oak Creek, I was moving on all fours down to the lake at an incredible speed. I felt very Vampacoti, but I didn’t change physically. I was moving purely on impulse,” I added, recalling the s
linky feel.
Freely flowing with the replay, I lurched forward onto all fours. My ears tugged back and my spine expanded into a tail, liberating into full rotation. Teeth, hair, and nails sharpened, elongating back and forth. My arms extended to the length of my legs. Frustratingly, the more I pushed into fully formulating, the more it slipped away. Something, possibly my mask, was holding me back from going all the way. I couldn’t wait to figure it out. The feeling of shape-shifting was expectedly exhilarating.
Zeta beckoned, breaking my concentration, sending me totally human.
“Yes,” I said knowing the talent was a couple practices away. I shivered, excited by the discovery and ultra sports high. “Not wearing my mask and accelerating down a mountainside,” I paused, amplifying the chill going through Dev and me, “I know I could formulate feline.” Rolling through big cats in my mind, a picture of a red-orange sabertooth with whipped black stripes and pearl teeth stood out vividly. It matched my love.
“I can’t control it yet,” I said, not having broken the seal. “I hope this passes to the kids.” I wanted them to be all things for the joy of it.
Dev parted his puckered lips, skating into a delighted smile.
“We are having a girl and a boy.” I couldn’t wait to share. Dev lit up in pink fireworks. “Is that why one is green and the other is violet?” I couldn’t stop the baby wondering.
“What do you mean?” Dev asked.
I put fabric between my mask and skin. Pearlescent rays, laced in green from my right side and violet from my left side, poked out like the solar flares. “See the traces of green and violet?” I asked.
“I see the babies’ concentrations of light, but no color,” he responded curiously. Dev moved his eyebrows up and down as thinking bees buzzed around his head. “Your eyes can see a wider frequency of light.” He bathed me in reassurance, despite not seeing or knowing what the colors meant. He knew how to evaporate my fear of uncertainty, eliciting excitement. His love for me and the fledgling babies was wonderfully contagious.
